Ask Michael: How to start doing a Weekly Review?

✔️Productivity

AMA (Ask Michael Anything) - is a series of posts I’m running on this blog inspired by hundreds of emails I received from my readers and Nozbe users. Today I’ll discuss weekly reviews and moving things forward, just like in this question I received from a Nozbe user:

I always struggle with my daily and weekly reviews and find it easy to delay doing the things that are in my priority list even though I know that I need to do them. Advice?

Weekly review is hard at first, but necessary and gets easier with time!

I’ve also had my share of problems with forcing myself to regular weekly reviews but it is so important. Without it your system looses its value and strength. Try this:

Schedule a 2-hour review next Monday

Try to promise yourself that next Monday you would take 2 hours to do your review, see what is going on in all the projects you have in Nozbe, choose 2-3 next actions and set them up as priorities for Tuesday in order to move the projects forward. Do not hesitate to resign from some of the tasks/projects that have been there for ages and you never even touched them.

After you are done - reward yourself with 30 minutes of something you like - a tv series, facebook/twitter or jogging :)

Try also to think why is it like that? What stops you? Are you afraid to spend so much time and not push your projects forward or maybe it is boring for you? Or you just don’t want to face reality of the state of some of your projects?

If you find it hard to focus on this, go somewhere. Change your scenery. I go to a cafeteria and don’t leave until I’m done. My friend Augusto does the same thing.

Starting Priority tasks

I have also my way for doing the things from the priority list. I know it is hard to kickoff and get hard, big, scary tasks done, so:

I try to plan my day before getting to bed the day before. I choose 1-3 big tasks that are going to be crucial the next day
When I get to work in the morning I don’t open my mailbox or social media or news portals.
I open Nozbe, choose the first big and scary task and divide it into small, easy steps. I normally use a checklist in Nozbe to do that.
I start working on the first little thing right away. I think about how great I am going to feel when it is done, how proud and satisfied I am going to be!
After the whole checklist is checked I indulge myself with a nice and healthy meal or a workout.

I think that reading Productive! Magazine can help you out - especially 5 first issues. Some of the articles I recommend are:

Question: How do you start your weekly review?

Thursday, August 20, 2015 /ama-weekly-review/